Chair of English Studies: Literature and Culture (Prof. Feldmann)

Welcome to the Literatures and Cultures of Great Britain

Prof. Feldmann and her team focus on British literature(s) and culture(s). Her research centres on literary and other (pop-)cultural phenomena in Great Britain, with a specific emphasis on theoretical, interdisciplinary and predominantly historical approaches. While her research and teaching covers British literature from the Renaissance to the present, a main focus is on the 16th/17th and the 19th/20th centuries. Of special interest are literary and cultural representations with intersecting categories of difference (especially ones relating to ethnicity and gender), their impact on identity formation and on processes of social stratification, and their connections to other discourses, such as economy, religion, politics, society or modern media. Historical case studies deal with specific socio-political structures and with politics, ideologies and mentalities in Great Britain. Focussing on these issues implies an extension of the text paradigm, which now also includes other, non-literary, symbolic frameworks by which shared meanings are produced and circulated, thus also foregrounding questions of canonisation, mediality and the materiality of culture.